The eleventh annual OxPeace Conference aims to explore some of the challenges to peace, and responses to those challenges, that arise from the ascendancy of human beings on planet Earth and the consequent impact on our environment.
OxPeace suggests as a working definition of ‘peace’: ‘Human security and human flourishing, in a sustainable environment, with the constructive management of conflict.’
The Conference opens with ‘global heating’ and the issue of climate justice – and unfolds the total human impact on our environment, in human migration, food insecurity, biodiversity loss, the ubiquity of plastics, changes in the Arctic and Antarctic and the oceans, urbanisation, and the nexus between environmental exploitation, crime, conflict and peace. What level of the human population can this planet peacefully sustain? What answers are there to this question, and what ethical, political and practical issues arise? How do we react to this complexity? How can positive peace be built?
Speakers: Professor Franz Baumann, New York University (former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Environment and Peace Operations) on ‘Is Climate Change too big for Politics?Global heating’, Prof Henry Shue (Oxford) on climate justice; Prof Charles Godfray (Oxford Martin School) and Brian Lander (Deputy Director, WFP) on food security, Prof Mark Maslin (UCL) on plastics, wildlife conservation and the need for a new ‘politics of the Anthropocene’, Dr Heather Bouman (Oxford) on the Arctic and Antarctic: climate change, ice, and the oceans’ invisible forest; Daniel Ruiz (SSSUP, Pisa) and Oluwasolape Onafowora (Nigeria) on environment-related conflict and peacebuilding; Prof Romola Davenport (Cambridge) on population, urbanisation and health; Dr Coline Covington, psychoanalytical reflections on responses to climate change; Steve Killelea (Founder, Institute for Economics and Peace, IEP) on systems approaches to complexity in building positive peace.
Registration: The Conference is open to all. To register, email Conference Organiser, Jeremy Cunningham: Cunningham.jeremy@gmail.com
It will be possible to walk in on Saturday – note registration is now 08.30 for 09.00 start – but please register in advance if possible, it helps with catering etc. A contribution towards costs (£5 for students, £10 for non-students) is payable on Saturday. Coffee, tea and sandwich lunch are included.
There will be a Conference Dinner on Friday, 17 May at Rewley House. Dinner tickets are £40 for non-students, but £20 if you are a student and among the first 15 students to register, full price thereafter. To honour this year’s theme the dinner will be vegetarian – but wine is included! Dinner speaker: Brian Lander, Deputy Director, World Food Programme, formerly at UNHCR. Payment for the dinner must be made in advance, payment instructions will be sent to you.
